Store and Forward

Store and Forward

Get out of the guessing game - know exactly where your fleet is. The radio unit collects location information every 2-5 seconds, providing a much more detailed history on the routes taken. To decrease radio channel usage and load, the information is grouped into data packages and is sent to the dispatch console in specific intervals. In the event of a connection loss or operating outside the repeaters coverage all data is stored on the option board and is available to be sent on request or when triggered by a condition with a specific priority.

Why use Store and Forward?

Many MOTOTRBO radios are equipped with GPS modules, which enables operators to track locations of their radio users. The problem is, however, that the larger the fleet of your radios the increasingly harder it becomes to obtain GPS updates frequently enough for your dispatch console to show the historical route rather than just a few locations hundreds of meters apart. The root cause of the poor performance of radio channels when it comes to large amounts of data is the bandwidth. In search for a higher spectrum efficiency, radio system designers do their best to keep it as narrow as possible. This bottleneck does not allow GPS updates to be polled at reasonable intervals if you want to monitor too many radio users, only because location packets from all these radios cannot be delivered to TRBOnet at the same time. This is why it is not uncommon to request GPS coordinates every 60, 120 or even 300 seconds. If you are forced to choose large GPS intervals, this is what you can expect to see on the dispatch console when you build a historical route (on the left of the picture)

Does this give you all information you require? Can you figure out the exact route taken by the blue truck? If this is not sufficient, you may want to consider utilizing the Store and Forward feature to get a much smoother line similar to the route shown on the right of the above picture.

How Does it work?

First of all, you need a DP4000 series radio (also known as "new generation" radios or XPR 5000/7000), either standard or "enhanced". Most of these radios have a slot for an option board inside. An option board may look like this:

You can use either Motorola's Generic Option Boards (GOB) or TRBOnet Option Boards (TOB). No matter which one you choose, you should flash it with TRBOnet Software for Option Boards, part of our regularly updated SWIFT package that can be downloaded here. Once installed and properly configured, the option boards starts storing GPS data received by the radio in the internal memory every 3-5 seconds. The built-in software processes this information and compresses it so each package contains a few tens of coordinates rather than just one location data. This package is then sent to TRBOnet on schedule if the channel is free. You may also choose not to set any schedule and request GPS data manually when you need it.

How much information can it hold?

A GOB has the memory capacity of 8 MB. Although it does not sound very impressive, this is still sufficient to store up to 500,000 coordinates! Considering 15-20 updates per minute, an 8 hour shift 5 days a week, the memory capacity will suffice for 10-12 weeks. A second generation TOB (TRBOnet Option Board) supports SD memory cards and is delivered with a 4 GB card on board, or 500 times the storage capacity of a GOB. Assuming that the update interval remains the same, this will be enough to record GPS locations for over 100 (one hundred) years. We believe that should satisfy most customers' needs.